


i'll be home for christmas (where the love light gleams)

by shuuuliet



Series: the most wonderful time of the year (merry psychmas) [6]
Category: Psych (TV 2006)
Genre: F/M, First Christmas, Found Family, Shules, an unconventional christmas tradition, christmas day, established shules, mentions of pining shawn, shawn is opening up fiiiiiinally, soft shawn, supportive jules
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:54:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28292694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuuuliet/pseuds/shuuuliet
Summary: It’s Christmas Day, and Shawn and Juliet are spending their first Christmas together. They’re having a wonderful Christmas, until Shawn shares that he has one not-so-festive Christmas tradition. Can he find the right way to share it with Juliet?Set in Season 5.Written for “12 Days of Psychmas”, an unconventional take on Days 11 and 12. Prompts: “traditions” and “family”.
Relationships: Juliet O'Hara/Shawn Spencer
Series: the most wonderful time of the year (merry psychmas) [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2060061
Comments: 12
Kudos: 25
Collections: 12 Days of Psychmas 2020





	i'll be home for christmas (where the love light gleams)

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here we are, at the end of Psychmas! This story encompasses the final two prompts, “traditions”, and “family”. Thanks so much to @FanFreak611 for putting this challenge together—I had so much fun working on it! And, I think this last piece might be my favorite one of the series.
> 
> Set in Season 5, during Shawn and Juliet’s first Christmas together. 
> 
> As always, I don’t own Psych, Shawn, or Juliet (they belong to Steve Franks) or Christmas (which belongs to Jesus Christ and also maybe to Santa Claus, but…less). The title comes from “I’ll be Home for Christmas”.

Juliet leans against Shawn on the couch in front of her Christmas tree, feeing more warm and cozy and festive than she has any other Christmas since she moved to Santa Barbara, and perhaps on any other Christmas before that, at least since she was a very little girl. It’s been a wonderful morning, waking up in Shawn’s arms and then finding their way lazily to the Christmas tree, opening presents with hot chocolate in hand. They’d even made pancakes when they were done with the presents, Shawn doing his best to make snowmen out of the batter and even succeeding about half the time.

All of that aside, there’s just something about Shawn that feels like home, even though they haven’t even been dating for a full year yet. She knows there’s still a lot of Shawn she doesn’t know—walls to break down, still—but she loves these quiet, tender moments with him, when they’re cuddled up together and it feels like they’re wrapped in a blanket of affection.

As if he could read her mind, she feels Shawn’s lips brush against the side of her forehead. He smells like pine needles and maple syrup and something else that’s distinctly, wonderfully _Shawn_. It makes her want to cuddle closer to him. “Good Christmas, Jules?” he asks.

She turns her face to meet his eyes, smiling widely at him. “The best.”

“Good,” he says, smiling back, but his smile seems to sag for a second, though he tries to hide it.

Juliet frowns. “Something wrong, Shawn?”

He hesitates, and that worries her. Maybe he’s not quite as content as she is, not quite as content as she’d thought he was. 

“Shawn?” she prompts anxiously.

He takes a deep breath. “There’s, uh, there’s this thing I do, every Christmas,” he says quietly. “Sort of a tradition, I guess. But it’s not like the traditions that you’re used to, that you have with your family, and it’s not—well, it’s not exactly something I look forward to, but I want,” he pauses, as if deciding whether to finish his sentence. “I think I want you to be there, with me. I want to show you.”

She smiles. “Shawn, of course we can do your tradition, whatever it is! We don’t have anything planned today.”

He hesitates again, fumbling nervously with the fringe on the blanket that’s spread across both of them. She’s unused to seeing this level of nervousness from him; she’s so used to the way he always exudes confidence. And yet, part of her is endeared to him even more, with the way he’s showing her this other side. It’s deeper, more sincere, and even more than that, she can see that he’s letting her in because he cares for her.

“I just don’t want you to be disappointed,” he says. “Because I know you’re used to fun family traditions and this...isn’t that. Actually, it might be the opposite of that.”

She leans up to kiss him on the cheek, and a smile dances across his face from the sudden affection. “Shawn,” she says seriously, “whatever it is, I want to be there with you. Christmas isn’t about my fun traditions, this Christmas is about us, and that means _all_ of us, even if it’s not as fun or festive. Whatever you want to do, we’ll do it.”

He raises an eyebrow at her, sudden playfulness in his eyes. “ _Whatever_ I want to do?”

She elbows him, giving him a look. “You know what I mean. I can tell this is important to you, so I want you to know...I’m on board. No matter what.”

They take her car, Shawn driving, which fits, since she still has no idea where they’re going. “I’ve never gone to this spot not on my Norton,” he comments as they get into the car. He looks at her, his eyes soft and a little shy. “But this is so much better.” She smiles back at him, wondering for the millionth time where they’re going.

He’s quiet, mostly, in the car—lost in thought, maybe, and she tries not to let it worry her. “Christmas is a good day for a drive,” she comments, as they head up towards the Santa Ynez mountains.

He nods, smiling at her, but still doesn’t say anything. She smiles back at him, but the guardedness returns to his eyes. It’s the look he wears when he’s afraid, about to be vulnerable, and it both worries and somehow excites her. It’s not often that Shawn opens up, but he’s been doing it more and more since they got together, and it always feels like a special privilege, seeing bits of him no one else has ever seen.

“I want to show you something,” he says, at last. “And it’s kind of hard to explain. So just...bear with me, okay?” The thread of anxiety she’d seen in his eyes appears in his voice as he asks this, barely, just an undercurrent, but there nonetheless.

Juliet leans over and squeezes his right hand, which rests on his lap. “I trust you, Shawn.”

They continue heading up towards the mountains, and once they’ve gained a little bit of altitude, she can tell that they must be getting close. She can see the way Shawn’s eyes are scanning their surroundings, as though he’s looking for something in particular. At last, Shawn pulls off the road, in a seemingly random spot, but she knows him well enough to know that it isn’t random.

“Come on,” he says, taking her hand once they’re out of the car. He pulls her through a grove of trees. “I know this seems really weird,” he says, “probably especially to a cop, me driving you to an unknown location, that turns out to be off the side of the road in the wilderness, but I promise it’s less weird than it seems.” He pauses. “I mean, it is still a _little_ weird, though, just so we’re clear.”

Juliet laughs, “hey, I trust you,” she says again, squeezing his hand, and he pulls their joined hands up to his lips to brush a kiss along her knuckles. 

At last, they reach a clearing, which turns out to be just on the edge of the mountain. There, as they look out towards the coast, is the most beautiful view of Santa Barbara that Juliet has ever seen.

They look out for a moment, in silence. “You can see everything from up here,” he says at last.

“It’s beautiful,” she replies, “but why would this be weird, or difficult to explain?”

He hesitates. “You know, I’ve never even told Gus this.” He pauses, shaking a finger at her. “Which means _you_ can’t tell Gus this, even though, of all the secrets I’ve ever kept from Gus, this one is definitely the least likely to land us in prison, which is probably good, seeing as I’m talking to you now, and I’m not totally convinced you like me enough to hear about some of those yet--.”

Juliet cuts him off, raising an eyebrow. “You were saying?”

“Right,” he says, taking a breath. “This is the very edge of Santa Barbara,” he says, gesturing back to the road they came in on. “You keep going down that road, you cross the city limits. If you’re trying to get away, this is…well, it’s your last look.”

She nods, trying to understand. “And you come up here on Christmas.”

He looks shy again, shrugging. “Every year since I was eighteen. Christmas is...hard, sometimes. It shouldn’t be, maybe, but with my family being the way it is, I always needed the escape, I guess.”

She nods, not wanting to say anything because she doesn’t want to break the spell of Shawn’s vulnerability.

“It’s _also_ ,” he says, “the last place I came when I left Santa Barbara. This was my last look at the city, and it showed me everything I needed to know. I had no regrets about leaving when I came up here, and then I got on the road, and I didn’t really look back, not until Christmas.”

“You came back on Christmas?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I came back here, that first Christmas after I left. I came up here, and I looked out, and I realized I was still so...angry. Looking out at Santa Barbara, all I could remember was why I left. This was the closest I was willing to get to my old life, to the messiness of my parents, to the way that things had been when I took off.”

“So you didn’t even go down into the city?”

He shakes his head. “No. I really wanted to see Gus, and I felt terrible about not seeing him, but I couldn’t do it. So I made it up to him by visiting him at college the day he got back to school. That was the trip when we--,” he pauses, laughter appearing in his eyes. “Oops, actually, that’s a not-for-cop-ears secret. We’ll, uh, discuss that another time.”

She gives him a look, but she can’t help smiling. “I see.”

“Anyway,” he says, clearing his throat, “I kept coming up here, year after year, when I was gone, and I’d think about my dad—I didn’t even know he had left Santa Barbara, too, or later when he came back—and it became my unofficial Christmas tradition. It was _like_ coming home for Christmas, in a way, except it was coming home enough to see that this…wasn’t really my home. It couldn’t be.”

He looks out at the view again, instead of at her, and she leans against him, wanting to provide silent reassurance. His arms instinctively wrap around her, pulling her close to him. “You know, Jules,” he says after a moment, “that stuff that I just said, that’s not why I brought you up here.”

She pulls back. “It’s not?”

He shakes his head, looking at her. “You remember your first apartment, when you first got to Santa Barbara? The one you were in for like your first two and a half years?”

She nods, unsure where this is going. “Of course.”

“So do I.” He points southwest, way in the distance. “It’s right there.”

She frowns, not quite understanding. “You looked for my old apartment?”

He doesn’t answer the question right away. “All those years, I used to come up here, look out, find my dad’s house, and I would just get so angry. All it would take was a half second look, and I was done. I was never coming back.”

“But then?”

“Christmas Day, that very first year that you were here—you’d been here just under a year, then, and so had I—I came up here, and I found myself looking for that apartment.” He points to it again, smiling. “And I found it, right there. And I wasn’t so angry anymore, didn’t feel quite as out of place.”

She smiles softly at him. “ _Shawn_.”

He points to a different place, not far from her apartment—the police station. “The next year, I found your apartment again, and I found the station. And then after that, when you moved, I found that new place too.” He points in the direction of her current apartment, the one they had just shared Christmas morning in together.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know, maybe that sounds a little creepy. But the thing is, Jules, what I’m trying to say is, ever since I met you, when I came up here, I started seeing these places...and I remembered why I stayed.”

She ought to be used to the way Shawn uses words by now, after nearly a year of dating him, but her heart still swells with love for him. He’s always doing things like that— _saying_ things like that, in a way that’s both beautiful and hugely romantic, but also so uniquely Shawn.

She leans up, kissing him on the cheek and then brushing her lips against the corner of his mouth. “I’m so glad you stayed, Shawn,” she whispers. She wants to say more—wants to find a way to express what it means to her that he’s letting her in like this, letting her see a part of him that no one has ever seen—but she doesn’t know quite how to say it yet.

Shawn hugs her when they break apart, holding her close to him, and she wonders if, for once, he, too, is struggling to find the right words to say.

At last, he pulls away, smiling. “Now don’t get a big head about this, Jules,” he says, and she looks up at him in confusion.

His smile grows wider. “Your head is perfectly sized,” he explains. “Gus would say it’s very proportional.”

She laughs. “Okay?”

“I just want to say,” he continues, still smiling, although looking more serious now, “that this, being here, I mean—being here with you—it finally feels like this is… _home_.”

Now it’s her turn to throw her arms around him, and she smiles into his chest as she feels his arms tighten around her. “You are home, Shawn,” she says, and then it occurs to her that maybe that’s exactly what she means—it may be early on for them, but he is her family, he is her home. She repeats it, whispering to him, as she leans up to press her mouth to his, hoping maybe he’ll understand what she means. “You _are_ home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Psychmas to all, and to all a good night. 
> 
> I so hope you enjoyed this, I really enjoyed writing it. As always, I would love to see any feedback you may have, and thank you so much for taking the time to read my work! I hope you’ve enjoyed Psychmas as much as I have! (And there may be a few festive stories still coming your way over the next few days, stay tuned!) Merry merry Christmas to all who celebrate!


End file.
